Purify the water of class C has become good business source

New players in the segment of filters and water purifiers have exponential growth with focus on middle class
Traditionally in the hands of companies like Europe, Lorenzetti, Latina and IBBL, filters and drinkers noted in recent years the arrival of signed gadgets not only by giant white line brands like Electrolux and Consul, but even multi-threaded Unilever. A low profile that joined the headquarters of the companies with the desire to drink in the assessment of consumers who now fight for market leadership.
The last bet in the early 2000-when Whirlpool launched the subscription model for the cleanser market-Brastemp seemed to walk in calm waters until near the turn of the Decade. There are four and a half years, Carlos Guimarães, Director of Electrolux products, was one of the executives pay attention to new market niches. "The problem is that we had little information. It's a market that wasn't (and still isn't) audited. We had an idea, one North, but that's all, "he recalls.
Despite the distrust of some colleagues (and competitors), he triggered the company's Development Center in Curitiba and went on to work under a "calculated risk". "You had to have an excellent, reliable product, to be sold at retail. The model of direct selling door-to-door, that Europe operated with much success until a recent past, had clearly lost her breath. But there was a lot of market. Risk and it worked, "Clemons.
The success was the input model size (price of r $ 300) missing in the market last year. "It's no exaggeration to say that our growth is 100% a year", concludes Guimarães, who at the end of the month will replace the entry for a cleaner model of higher added value (r $ 450, but already with ice water, function that did not exist in the previous version).
With the expertise of those who have played in the segment through the equipment rentals and a fully national production, Whirlpool left for the counterattack. In 2010, the multinational based in the United States put the retail models from the Consul also in the same price range of Swedish competitors. Brastemp "already had a consolidated model. The models Consul came to reinforce and complement our product line through a more conventional strategy, "says William Custódio, Director of new company business for Latin America.
Despite the high-end models in the range of $ 700, Custódio admits, without disclosing numbers, the input model, geared for classes B and C, represents the largest volume of sales of the Consul, whose growth in the segment is under mysterious "two digits per year".
The figure of surprising youngest of this new Board went to Unilever, which at the end of 2011 announced the arrival of two models developed in the center of the company's technologies in India. On the strategy of conquering a market, the company invested r $ 30 million in advertising last year (cipher that should be repeated until the end of 2013), in addition to offering the product cheaper competitors (from R $ 260). "The filters and Purifiers are only in 16% of households in the country. We're talking about a market that is extremely promising. Brazilians see today that it is possible and that it is worth investing to have water quality ", concluded Barsellha Muthulingam, Director of the construction area of liquor brands of Unilever.
NUMBERS
R $ 260: is the price of the input line Purifier of Unilever, a little cheaper than the models of Electrolux and Consul (costing from $ 300)
16%: Brazilian families use filters or purifiers for tap water treatment